Microblog Memes

Isn't this more about things falling apart when the person wanted to continue doing it? If I want to run a shop but it doesn't work financially, then my plan has failed.

I think you are looking into things in a non healthy way.

You are right that success and failure are not binary. Furthermore, every system, be it physical, living, or social, fails sooner or later.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to not fail for as long as possible, for if something brings joy or safety it's continued success is important. It follows that if something that's important to someone fails it's healthy to morn it and to try to learn from it to not repeat the same failure.

Seems to me a logical extension from our capitalist (line must go up) and Christian (stay in line or go to hell) cultural shit pile of a country.

The best definition of success I heard was from Earl Nightingale -

Success is the progressive realization of a worthwhile goal.

Doing something because you want to do it--and it betters yourself, your family, or your community--makes you successful.

Forever is a very long time

we as a culture have turned “forever” into the only acceptable definition of success.

I really don't agree with the premise, and would encourage others to reject that worldview if it starts creeping into how they think about things.

In the sports world, everything is always changing, and careers are very short. But what people do will be recorded forever, so those snapshots in time are part of one's legacy after they're done with their careers. We can look back fondly at certain athletes or coaches or specific games or plays, even if (or especially if) that was just a particular moment in time that the sport has since moved on from. Longevity is regarded as valuable, and maybe relevant to greatness in the sport, but it is by no means necessary or even expected. Michael Jordan isn't a failed basketball player just because he wasn't able to stay in the league, or even that his last few years in the league weren't as legendary as his prime years. Barry Sanders isn't a failed American football player just because he retired young, either.

Same with entertainment. Nobody really treats past stars as "failed" artists.

If you write a book or two, then decide that you don’t actually want to keep doing that, you're a “failed” writer.

That is a foreign concept to me, and I question the extent to which this happens. I don't know anyone who treats these authors (or actors or directors or musicians) as failures, just because they've moved onto something else. Take, for example, young actors who just don't continue in the career. Jack Gleeson, famous for playing Joffrey in the Game of Thrones series, is an actor who took a hiatus, might not come back to full time acting. And that's fine, and it doesn't take away from his amazing performance in that role.

The circumstances of how things end matter. Sometimes the ending actually does indicate failure. But ending, in itself, doesn't change the value of that thing's run when it was going on.

| just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good.

Exactly. I would think that most people agree, and question the extent to which people feel that the culture values permanence. If anything, I'd argue that modern culture values the opposite, that we tend to want new things always changing, with new fresh faces and trends taking over for the old guard.

does anyone already have a better screenshot of the post? i wanna save one but not a jpeg thats this crispy

Some things I think we want to aim at for our entire lives, and those things are good in and of themselves even if we don't achieve them.

I think getting good nutrition, staying in a healthy state/sustaining or increasing our health span so we aren't sick, exercising so we can still get out of bed every day, seeking novelty and variety in the things we do, exploring new places, learning about the world around us and ourselves, sharing all of these things meaningfully with others on a similar journey, and even defending things that mean a lot to us are some examples of this.

The idea that these experiences must last eternally was something Nietzsche talked about this in his works. He rejected Plato's notion of the Forms as well as many religions' concepts of a life after death - this "other world". To Nietzsche, the good life in this world is defined by how far life can stray from its best moments, and that working through hardships and recognizing that they aren't permanent gives us the power of freedom.

Good times must be accompanied by bad or even mediocre times. Good times lasting forever are no different than bad or mediocre times lasting forever. So yeah, writing that book or making that friendship/relationship can be a good thing. And if those things aren't perfect, we have more reason than enough to make them better. Whether that's work shopping the book until it gets better or starting over with fresh new ideas. Whether that's meeting new people and developing those friendships over time, or leaving them for new friendships when other people don't want to reciprocate. I like to think of so many people wishing for good times to last forever are lazy and just don't want to put in the effort to change, which in my view is the whole point.

This reminds me of Sand Mandala

Once complete, the sand mandala's ritualistic dismantling is accompanied by ceremonies and viewing to symbolize Buddhist doctrinal belief in the transitory nature of material life.

Yup. And god forbid you start a small business that's successful and decide to pay your employees a good wage and set aside a fair amount of profit for yourself. That's loser talk. You need to go public or sell the business for a giant payout at the expense of your employees, and then you have to keep making more money every year for shareholders, or else they'll consider you a failure and jump ship

While this is true, it stands in contrast to the similar message co-opted to justify or cope with planned obsolescence in gaming. Chess and Odysseus can be good for centuries, so can some mechanical or story based video games.

Dan Savage (of the sex and relationship advice podcast "Savage Lovecast") says this frequently.

A short term relationship can also be successful. It doesn't have to end with one of the partners dying in order to be considered good and worthwhile.

Idk, being sad about and grappling with the impermanent nature of things is kinda a fundamental part of being human.

I totally disagree with your characterization. I can come up with dozens of examples of how people don't think that the goal is "forever". That's not to say that you're lying, if you feel it then no doubt your feelings are genuine, but I don't think your feelings are a good reflection of contemporary society at large.

On Wikipedia, an article for a deceased person reads, “[The deceased] was,” while an article for a TV show that has ended reads, “The Office is”

Feels kinda related in some way

You can blame George Lucas and Star Wars for this.

Do or do not there is no try.

Yoda